Expected PPP to support us on elections bill: Ahsan Iqbal

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Tuesday that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was expecting the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to support the passing of the Electoral Reforms Bill 2017.

He was addressing the meeting of the PML-N's general council in Islamabad where ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif was re-elected as the party's president. 

Iqbal said the amendment of the clause [barring disqualified parliamentarians from heading a political party] from the bill in the Senate was originally placed by former president General Ayub Khan, adding that it was then removed by PPP founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1975. 

"It was then brought back into the law in 2002 by former president Gen Pervez Musharraf," said Iqbal, explaining that the idea then was to keep Benazir Bhutto from heading the PPP and Nawaz the PML-N. 

"Last night, the National Assembly removed Musharraf’s ‘black law’," said Iqbal. 

He humbly asked the PPP how it could oppose the PML-N when it did what Bhutto did. "We expected the PPP to stand with us. We all know Musharraf brought the NAB law to harass political opponents," he said further. 

The interior minister also praised Nawaz for his democratic and economic credentials. 

Referring to the opposition parties' intent to challenge the elections law in the Supreme Court, Iqbal said those who wish to turn the Supreme Court into a political party are enemies of the law and Constitution. 

Concluding his speech, Iqbal said, "No more, enough is enough. Pakistan’s 20 million people have the right to decide the country’s future".